Self-experimentation in Scientific American
Science has a long history of self-experimentation. Ethics and objectivity questions aside, researchers often found that the only way to satisfy their curiosity was by experimenting on themselves. For example, 16th century physician Santorio Santorii ran a 30 year self-experiment where he weighed himself, his food, his drink, and his excrement, in what was perhaps the first study of metabolism. According to Scientific American's JR Minkel, the 1987 book Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine by Lawrence Altman is a wonderful history of these kinds of self-studies. Over at Scientific American's Web site, Minkel tells eight stories of "do-it-on-yourself discovery. Here are the brave souls he profiles, several of whom are certainly familiar to regular BB readers:
• Kevin Warwick wired his nervous system into the Internet and his wife; now he's out to become one with The MatrixLink to Scientific American, Link to buy Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation In Medicine
• Morgan Spurlock turned an extreme Big Mac Attack into a public health wake-up call
• Stephen Hoffman has given years of sweat—and lots of blood—on his quest to stop a global killer
• Olivier Ameisen had tried everything to dry out; then he heard about baclofen
• Deb Roy and his family are risking their privacy so that someday computers might understand human speech
• Seth Roberts says the key to self-help lies in the scientific method
• Sasha Giedd would have been the only girl in high school with a time-lapse movie of her developing brain, if not for a change in the rules
• Alexander Shulgin endured a government crackdown and bone-melting hallucinations in pursuit of new mind-bending compounds
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Oh, Jesus, no -- Kevin Warwick is in Scientific American? I thought that charlatan publicity hound was out of the public eye for good.
My hero of self-experimentation is Dr. Barry Marshall, who suspected that a bacteria was responsible for stomach ulcers.
For years, physicians had considered them to be caused by stress, and to prove they were not, he drank a vial containing the bacteria. Surprise surprise, he got an ulcer, and then, after some suffering, cured himself with common antibiotics.
Now, ulcers are cured, not treated. Nobel Prize for him, btw.
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I was about to post the same. Apparently self experimentation was the only legal way he could prove it.
Don't forget John Stapp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stapp) and his military financed rocket sled g-force self-tests
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uyDuVCxA5qY
He managed to detach his retinas by being subjected to the effects of up to 46.2 times the force of gravity
I've been my own guinea pig for a couple of experiments, most notably in bone densitometry. There's only so much you can do with cadavers and sheep, and someone has to be the first human subject.
What about Robert Lopez, who put cat ear mites into his ears? At least he won an IgNobel!
"Takuan the Prolific", he soiled himself manning the keyboard in the name of upholding the Good.....
I like the approaches used by Seth Roberts in dealing with insomnia and mood disorders. I've definitely noticed a correlation between my body fat content and my ability to sleep. In my case, it's waking up frequently during the night and switching positions.
I think that is motivation enough to begin weight loss. Perhaps I'll try his approach on that.
Has anyone else found methods for managing mood and regulating sleep that have worked for them?
Jeez. I sleep better fat. I toss and turn all night when I'm bony.
My favourite is a guy who goes by luckbeaweirdo and his tale of curing his asthma by self-infesting with hookworms by traveling to Cameroon and standing around in outdoor latrine fields.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971
ARgh, don't feed Captain Cyborg, it only increases his voracious hunger for publicity. Which is sad, cos some of his actual science is pretty good, it's the self-publicising that gets on my tits
#8: I'm extremely partial to "The Hacker Diet, How to Loose Weight and Hair through Stress and Poor Nutrition."
That catchphrase is just to get you reading. He's a programmer that decided to tackle his weight problem with black-block diagnostics. An insightful and sometimes funny read aimed at engineers, and his day-trader graphs let you monitor your weight trends to within less than a 100 calories.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/www/part1_1.html
And a website that does the graphing math for you:
http://www.physicsdiet.com/